Skip to comments.
Republican Contibutions to the Advancement of Civil Rights
Posted on 12/20/2002 5:45:17 PM PST by chengster
Republican Contibutions to the Advancement of Civil Rights
TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections; Your Opinion/Questions
KEYWORDS: civilrights; democrat; lott; race; republican
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-20, 21-23 next last
In a recent e-mail discussion with a hard headed liberal I listed some of the major contributions Republicans have made to Civil Rights and noted that the list is more impressive than anything the Liberals have done. Here is my short list please, help me out with others.
1. Abraham Lincoln emancipated the slaves. 2. Theodore Roosevelt was the first President to invite an Black to dinner in the White House. 3. Eisenhower sent Federal troops to Little Rock to integrate Central High. 4. Over eighty percent of Republicans voted for both the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act. 5. Nixon signed the Executive order making Afirmitive Action government policy (when it made sense). 6. Ronald Reagan signed the bill making MLK day a public holiday. 7. Today the three highest ranking black government officials are all Republicans (Powell, Rice and Thomas)
Please add to my list, Republicans have a great record on civil rights, don't let lying liberals paint us as racists!
1
posted on
12/20/2002 5:45:17 PM PST
by
chengster
To: chengster
Pushing a welfare reform bill that forced people to break their cycle of dependency.
To: chengster
I don't have proof, but on a forum on CSPAN on the Eisenhower presidency, it was said that Eisenhower was responsible for getting rid of the segregationist laws/rules in Washington, D.C. This was before DC was being run by a mayor and city council system.
3
posted on
12/20/2002 5:54:31 PM PST
by
RickGee
To: chengster
I hope all this attention to race and political parties,might make some black voters wake up and ask what the Dem Party has ever done for them. Other than the 10 dollars that some are given to vote each election,I'm hard pressed to think of any advantages to being black and a Democrat.
To: chengster
The real question is, what has the party of Lincoln done since it co-opted the "Dixiecrats," gathering them into a significant yet ultimately deadly faction that I choose to call the the "Redixiecans"?
This faction, a legacy of Nixon's "Southern stragegy," which was perfected by Reagan, includes real former Dixiecrats-turned-Redixiecans such as Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms, as well as the spiritual descendants of the Dixiecrats such as Redixiecans Trent Lott, Dick Armey and Tom DeLay.
There can be no question that the Republicans have utterly abandoned the legacy of Lincoln, not to mention more recent Republicans such as Everett Dirksen, and brought into their flock the dregs of the Democratic party, i.e., the Dixiecrats now turned Redixiecans.
It's time to spit those s-umb-gs out, don't you think?
5
posted on
12/20/2002 6:18:34 PM PST
by
conlib2
To: chengster
Go to C-Span.org today. On the left hand side is a thread titled something like 1964 Civil Rights Act. Click on it. You will not only see the percentage you mentioned is correct, but that more Democrats (by a large number) than Republicans voted against the Act. You will also see who they were (big names).
Remind your friends that in 1993 Clinton awarded Senator Fulbright the Presidential Medal of Honor and called Fulbright his mentor and a great humanitarian. (I can send exact quotes from the Washington Post if you need them and my editorial in a recent Washington Times). Fulbright was an unrepentent racist and segregationist who voted against the Civil Rights Act both times it came up in the Senate. Can you imagine if Pres. Bush had so honored Sen. Thurmond? And called him his mentor? But where was the press and DNC when Clinton did it? nowhere. Only Republicans are racist, of course!
6
posted on
12/20/2002 6:33:59 PM PST
by
Peach
To: Peach
Overall, you support my point. In 1964 when the Civil Rights Act was passed, there WERE a lot of Dixiecrats who were still in the Democratic party. They have since moved lock, stock and barrel to the G.O.P. Today, you would never get the percentage of Republicans voting in favor of that landmark legislation than you got back then when Dirksen was Senate Minority Leader hand played an important role in sheparding the legislation through. (By the way, Barry Goldwater, like Mr. Fulbright, voted against it.)
I am not in a position to say definitively that you're wrong about Mr. Fulbright being "unrepentant," but I have read that he had, by the time Clinton honored him, renounced his prior segregationist views. Granted, it probably took him a little more time that the day or two it took Trent Lott to renounce his views.
7
posted on
12/20/2002 6:49:40 PM PST
by
conlib2
To: conlib2
This faction, a legacy of Nixon's "Southern stragegy," which was perfected by Reagan, includes real former Dixiecrats-turned-Redixiecans such as Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms, as well as the spiritual descendants of the Dixiecrats such as Redixiecans Trent Lott, Dick Armey and Tom DeLay. Reagan did not have a 'southern strategy', Reagan won all over based on Tax cuts, reducing government controls and strong national defence. Many of the southern Democrats (like the Gore's for instance) stayed Democrats. Republicans abandoned the civil rights cause after it when it went beyond equal rights and became a special rights cause as it is today.
To: conlib2
Conlib2: Maybe, you can give us list of significant civil rights accomplishments of the Democrats. I seriously doubt it's nearly as impressive as the Republican list, but you seem like someone who might be able to come up with something.
BTW most of my original list happened after 1964. My opinion is the the Dixiecrat's changed not the Republican party. There is a seemless history of Republican civil rights support , unlike the very mixed histroy of the Democratic party.
9
posted on
12/20/2002 7:19:53 PM PST
by
chengster
To: Always Right
Reagan's purely politcal (and amoral) decision to give a tax break to Bob Jones University, despite its racist ban on interracial dating, is one example of his Southern strategy.
10
posted on
12/20/2002 7:22:40 PM PST
by
conlib2
To: chengster
This is what I got from Rush and Ann Coulter:
1866: first civil rights act passed by Radical Republicans over a Presidential veto, blacks granted citizenship, segregation was forbidden
1868 Republicans passed the 14th amendment passed granting equal protection
1871 Republicans passed voting rights
1920s, the Democratic platforms didn't even call for anti-lynching legislation as the Republican platforms did.
1957 civil rights act pushed by Ike, passed Nixon met with MLK, Sen Kennedy voted against it, A Democrat Senator filibustered it for 24 hrs, Senator Johnson watered it down so that it lacked enforcement
1960 another civil rights act, again Dems kept enforcement measures out of it
1964 civil rights act favored by a larger % of R than D
To: conlib2
The dixie never changed to GOP - See Bryd Hollings and the others dies as Democrats Gore , Fullbright , Sam Irvin
To: conlib2
Reagan's purely politcal (and amoral) decision to give a tax break to Bob Jones University, despite its racist ban on interracial dating, is one example of his Southern strategy. Reagan did not give a tax break to Bob Jones University. He supported their position in court, which they eventually lost. That is not an immoral position, but a Religious Freedom principle (unless you find Religious Freedom immoral). Normally a religious institude qualifies for the tax break, but the IRS took that right away from Bob Jones based on their inter-racial dating policy. Bob Jones University did have some kooky ideas, but they have that right to have those ideas without the use of government influence. Try again to show this so-called 'southern strategy', because that one does not fly.
To: chengster
You appear to be endorsing a race agenda, purely for its own sake--i.e., a racial agenda--with no consistent ideological thread. When you cite Teddy Roosevelt's invitation to the great Negro Conservative Educator, Booker T. Washington, in the same short squib with some of the excesses of the "Civil Rights" movement, you make a major logical error. Washington actively opposed the NAACP, in his later years. It represented a radical departure to his whole approach to race relations.
Washington advocated Negro progress via the traditional American approach, individual responsibility. The "Civil Rights" movement was simply a metaphor--in racial clothing--for the usual Socialist class warfare. (For example, see "Civil Rights" vs. A Free Society.)
William Flax
14
posted on
12/20/2002 7:49:44 PM PST
by
Ohioan
To: Always Right
Republicans abandoned the civil rights cause after it when it went beyond equal rights and became a special rights cause as it is today.
Sorry, I must re-word this statement. The Republicans did not abandon the civil rights cause...the Democrats did, or were never really a part of it.
In Californikastan...er...California, we passed Prop 209, the California Civil Rights Initiative, despite outrage by the lying racist Democrats (e.g., Jesse Jackson). We're still on the case of civil rights, no matter how the left tries to co-opt that phrase.
To: Always Right
Sorry I had to leave the discussion prematurely.
I don't find religious freedom amoral, but I do consider an amicus curae (sp?) brief in support of racist policy amoral, even if the policy is shrouded in the (misguided, rationalizing or cynical) garb of religious belief. (Would you support a Presidential amicus curae brief in support of, say, the Rostofarians' unrestricted use of marijuana or the Native American Church's use of peyote?) In any event, I simply don't believe Reagan's Justice Department would have gone out on that limb if were simply a matter of principle. There were political points to rack up.
Here's another example of Reagan's Southern Strategy. He kicked off his campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi, site of one of the most atrocious episodes in the history of the early 60s Civil Rights Movement, where three civil rights workers were slain. And his topic was States' Rights, which, whatever you may want to say in favor of, has undeniably been used as a pretext for the continuance of state-sanctioned racism.
That's not just a bad choice of places. It's a horrendous choice, and you can't plausibly say its significance escaped the Reagan campaign team.
For more on the interrelated issues of the GOP, the Dixiecrats and "states' rights," here's an interesting column by E.J. Dionne. To read it, you have to take a couple seconds to register with the Washington Post by answering a couple of innocuous questions.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A15306-2002Dec19.html
16
posted on
12/22/2002 9:36:54 AM PST
by
conlib2
To: conlib2
What is this nonsense about Reagan kicking off his campaign in Mississippi, my recollection is that he kicked it off in friggin' California. How 'bout some details. And what are you trying to imply anyway, that the man that made MLK Day a National Holiday was trying to appeal to racist? The history of the South is full of horrible acts of racism, after all it was dominated by Democratic Segregationist! Would you feel better if he had kicked it off in Selma, Memphis, Birmingham...? How 'bout Little Rock where a Republican President sent federal troops to integrate Central High against the wishes of a Democrat Governor?
BTW I'm still waiting, probably in vain to hear of any contribution Democrats have made to the Civil Rights struggle.
To: RickGee
Your absolutely right, Rick. Eisenhower ended segregation in the District of Columbia and even appointed the first black (Frederic Murrow) to an executive position on the White House staff. I watched a Presidential round table debate on C-Span about Ike a couple years ago. Among the speakers was the very liberal scholar, Blanche Wiesen Cook (sp), who had nothing but praise for Ike's civil rights record. Congressional Quarterly agreed saying, "although the Democratic controlled Congress watered them down, the administrations (Eisenhower) recommendations resulted in significant and effective civil rights legislation in 1957 and 1960...the first civil rights statutes to be passed in more than 80 years."
What's interesting to note, is that the President responsible for signing the 1964 Civil Rights Act (LBJ), was then, the Senate Majority Leader who was responsible for "watering down" the 1957 and 1960 legislation...still opposing anti-lynching legislaion and supporting poll taxes on poor black folk. While Democrats like to gloss over the Eisenhower years...and even argue that Ike was anti-civil rights because of his differences with Chief Justice Earl Warren, nothing could be further from the truth. Besides the fact that Ike appointed Warren to the Chief's seat, he also appointed Herbert Brownell as his Attorney General. Brownell led the fight for civil rights and helped author the '57 and '60 civil rights act...which the Dems also opposed in its original incarnation. Ike also appointed 5 significant Republican judges to the Federal judiciary in the Southern districts, that would help see his civil rigts legislation through. When JFK became president, he wouldn't even touch the civil rights issue until his last year in office, after being prodded by the NAACP.
I've got a question for Dems: Why would all these racist, southern Democrats join the Republican Party when it was the Republican Party who was leading the way on civil rights? If they were so disappointed with their Democratic collegues who supported civil rights, why would they join a Party that gave MORE support to the 1964 and 1965 civil rights act than their own party did? And if so many of them switched Parties, why did the Republicans still remain the minority Party in Congress. The Democratic Party remained solidly in control of the South until Reagan started making inroads in the 1980's. And even now, we're just seeing the first Republicans elected to the state's majorities since Reconstruction. The South is turning Republican for many reasons, not the least is that many northern businesses and corporations have migrated to the South for business oppurtunity. I also believe however, that the South is turning Republican for moral and cultural reasons. The South has always been the home of the "Bible Belt." It's not hard to see that liberal politicians have a disdain for religion and thus, their "progressive" ideals are being shunned by the citizens. The South turning Republican has nothing to do with race...it has to do with ideals.
18
posted on
12/23/2002 10:51:35 AM PST
by
cwb
To: chengster
What is this nonsense about Reagan kicking off his campaign in Mississippi, my recollection is that he kicked it off in friggin' California. How 'bout some details.Go to google and type in -- Reagan "Philadelphia, Mississippi" -- and you'll find scores of references. The first one google gave me is probably more balanced than Reagan -- or his worshippers -- deserve:
http://www.theagitator.com/archives/003132.php
A little further down, you'll find a column in Time by Jack White:
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,399921,00.html
Here is an excerpt from that column:
Space doesn't permit a complete list of the Gipper's signals to angry white folks that Republicans prefer to ignore, so two incidents in which Lott was deeply involved will have to suffice. As a young congressman, Lott was among those who urged Reagan to deliver his first major campaign speech in Philadelphia, Mississippi, where three civil rights workers were murdered in one of the 1960s' ugliest cases of racist violence. It was a ringing declaration of his support for "states' rights" a code word for resistance to black advances clearly understood by white Southern voters.
Then there was Reagan's attempt, once he reached the White House in 1981, to reverse a long-standing policy of denying tax-exempt status to private schools that practice racial discrimination and grant an exemption to Bob Jones University. Lott's conservative critics, quite rightly, made a big fuss about his filing of a brief arguing that BJU should get the exemption despite its racist ban on interracial dating. But true to their pattern of white-washing Reagan's record on race, not one of Lott's conservative critics said a mumblin' word about the Gipper's deep personal involvement. They don't care to recall that when Lott suggested that Reagan's regime take BJU's side in a lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service, Reagan responded, "We ought to do it." Two years later the U.S. Supreme Court in a resounding 8-to-1 decision ruled that Reagan was dead wrong and reinstated the IRS's power to deny BJU's exemption.
Democrats have, of course, made many contributions to the Civil Rights struggle, and to suggest otherwise is not only laughable, but begs of the question of how much respect you have for the intelligence of those who have benefited from Civil Rights legislation, most of whom are Democratic. From Harry Truman's integrating of the armed services to Hubert Humphrey's 1948 Civil Rights Bill and strong endorsement of civil rights at the 1948 Democratic Convention -- which sparked a walk-out by then-Dixicrat and now Redixican Strom Thurmond -- to Lyndon Johnson's strong support for the 1964 Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Bill, Democrats have been in the forefront of civil rights.
Which is not in any way to disparage the efforts of the statesmen of my father's Republican Party, such as President Eisenhower. But that was long ago, before the GOP and its southern strategy welcomed the racist refuse of the Democratic party with open arms.
19
posted on
12/24/2002 7:06:50 AM PST
by
conlib2
To: chengster
BTW, it's Christmas Eve morning and I probably won't be dropping by here for some time (I'm not a regular anyway, just pop in when I'm feeling ornery).
But regardless, I do wish you and all a Happy Christmas, Happy Holiday and Happy New Year. Seriously.
20
posted on
12/24/2002 7:15:45 AM PST
by
conlib2
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-20, 21-23 next last
Disclaimer:
Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual
posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its
management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the
exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson